On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Effort to sell LG Card Co, South Korea's largest credit card co, fails to attract single bidder as bidding deadline passes; Woori Bank, LG's biggest creditor, quickly extends deadline; government-owned Korea Development Bank has said it might take control if no bidder emerges; photo (M)
Deadline to trade for Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez passes, and Rangers say they will now look forward and build team around Rodriguez (M)
Virginia Heffernan Critic's Notebook column on traditional and new Christmas season television specials; reviews A Kid Rock Christmas, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town and The Year Without a Santa Claus; photos (M)
Northern Foods is selling two Irish food units, Batchelors Ltd and Beck Smith Ltd, to company owned by Barry's Tea and Bank of Scotland (Ireland) for 62 million euros ($77 million); stock price graph (S)
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in New York, outside lawyers for TV Azteca, tells its board, and possibly federal regulators, that it thinks company violated United States securities laws; says company, second-largest broadcaster in Mexico, has not disclosed to investors enough about role of Ricardo B Salinas Pliego, company's chairman and controlling shareholder, in transactions conducted by TV Azteca's cellphone service unit, Unefon, that could have yielded him profit of more than $100 million; cites new provision of Sarbanes-Oxley Act that permit lawyers to notify SEC if they believe company has breached securities law; photo (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of December 24, 2003, covering December 24, 2003.
Ruben Studdard
Alicia Keys
Various Artists
Toby Keith
Josh Groban
2003The Spanish police thwart an attempt by ETA to detonate 50 kg of explosives at 3:55 p.m. inside Madrid's busy Chamartín Station.[†]
ETA, an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, was an armed Basque nationalist and far-left separatist organization in the Basque Country between 1959 and 2018. The group was founded in 1959 during the era of Francoist Spain, and later evolved from a pacifist group promoting traditional Basque culture to a violent paramilitary group. It engaged in a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings throughout Spain and especially the Southern Basque Country against the regime, which was highly centralised and hostile to the expression of non-Castilian minority identities. ETA was the main group within the Basque National Liberation Movement and was the most important Basque participant in the Basque conflict.
In 2003, the world population was approximately 6,420,361,634 people[†]